Apple event: Watch the iPhone 5S and 5C event live (updated live blog)

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On September 18th, we’ll finally see the launch of iOS 7 on the iPhone 4, 4S, and 5. On the 20th, Apple will release its brand new affordable iPhone 5C and its flagship iPhone 5S. We learned all about the upcoming OS release, and the new iPhone models are quite exciting. Sadly, there wasn’t any news regarding the iPad, iPod Touch, or Macs. Hopefully, we’ll hear about them in October.

For the most part, Apple did pretty much exactly what we expected. The gold iPhone is real, the iPhone 5C is a truly colorful addition to the line-up, and fingerprint scanning turned out to be included in the home button of the 5S. Scroll down in this post for a complete blow-by-blow of today’s entire event.

12:50 PM: The big event is about to get started, so stay tuned for all of the big announcements out of Cupertino.

1:00 PM: Here we go, everyone! Tim Cook is on stage.

1:05 PM: As always, we have to deal with some updates. iTunes Festival is going strong — in its seventh year. No tickets, and over 20 million people have watched these concerts in over 100 countries. Really neat stuff happening here.

1:10 PM: Apple is still focused on retail.

1:15 PM: In October, Apple will be shipping its 700 millionth iOS device. Apple is very bullish that iOS 7 will have a swift launch.

Apple is really selling all of the new features in iOS 7. We’ve heard this all before, though.

Pull down to search from anywhere — that’s a useful feature. Multitasking still looks like WebOS. Siri is much improved. She can search Twitter and Wikipedia now.

Apple has drastically improved the Share Sheet, and that makes media much easier between friends — even over ad-hoc WiFi.

iTunes Radio is neat, but it’s no competitor to Spotify. Apple still doesn’t want to give up the ghost on that fruitful pay-per-track business.

iOS 7 will be out on September 18th! Will work with most modern iOS devices (iPhone 4 and up).

1:20 PM:

Now Cook is talking about iWork.

Now, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Number, and Keynote are all free on new iOS devices. This is quite and exciting move! This is very similar to what Apple has done previously on the Mac.

1:25 PM: Now it’s time for the main event: iPhone!

It’s official — Apple announced the iPhone 5C. It comes in five colors: green, white, blue, pink, and yellow. Pretty much just like we expected.

The entire back is made from a single piece — no seams. It’s made out of a polycarbonate, and Apple will be releasing silicone cases to make it grippier. I smell a slip-gate!

1:30 PM: Of course, it sports a 4-inch Retina display, and meets all of the requirements you’d expect out of an iPhone screen. It sports an A6 SoC, and the battery is actually better than the iPhone 5.

For the most part, this seems very much like a slightly updates iPhone 5. It supports a ton of LTE bands, has a peak of 100Mbps download, supports 802.11a/b/g/n, and has Bluetooth 4.0 built in.

On contract, the 16GB model is $99, and the 32GB model is $199. The cases will be $29 a pop.

Unsurprisingly, it’s eco-friendly as well.

1:35 PM: Here comes the iPhone 5S! And it’s in that ugly gold color in addition to black and white.

On the upside, it sports a brand new A7 SoC. Even better, it’s 64-bit — just like we heard it would be. This is superb news.

It has a 102mm^2 die size, over one billion transistors, 2x general-purpose registers, 2x floating-point registers, and a “modern instruction set.”

On the software side, iOS 7 is built with a 64-bit kernel, libraries, and drivers. All of the built-in apps are rebuilt to take advantage of the 64-bit CPU, and Xcode will have built-in support as well. With 64-bit support, the A7 is about twice as fast as the A6.

1:40 PM: Now, OpenGL|ES 3.0 is working on the iPhone.

To show off the horse power, Epic Games is showing off the next Infinity Blade game.

1:45 PM: Now, Apple is announcing a new co-processor: the M7. It’s job is to constantly measure motion data. It has a built-in accelerometer, gyroscope, and compas. It’s designed to make fitness apps better going forward. Interesting.

Better, Apple is including baked-in APIs, so developers will have ready access to it at all times.

1:50 PM: As far as battery goes, the 5S is a beast. 250 hours of standby time, 10 hours of talk time, and 10 hours of browsing. Pretty damn impressive. Let’s hope it works that well in the real world.

The camera has been improved as well. The iPhone 5S sports a five-element custom lens with a F2.2 aperture. The sensor’s active area is 15% larger. Apple isn’t bumping up the megapixels, though. Instead, Apple is making each pixel bigger. Now, they’ll be 1.5 microns.

The 5S also comes with a dual-flash set-up. It has a cool and warm combo to make colors more accurate.

1:55 PM: Using the new image stabilization functionality, it takes numerous photos, and gives you the best — clearest picture.

Even crazier, this new camera can capture 720p videos at 120fps — much better than most consumer-grade cameras.

2:00 PM: It looks like the fingerprint scanning rumors were true. Built into the home button is a 500 PPI scanner that will read your fingerprint. This addition means you can now simply touch your iPhone home button, and automatically be logged in — no more fiddling with pass-codes.

The best news? You can use your fingerprint to authenticate for App Store purchases. The password is done with!

2:05 PM: The iPhone 4S is now Apple’s free model, the iPhone 5C starts at $99, and the iPhone 5S starts at $199. You can pre-order the 5C and 5S on the 13ths, and nine countries will get the new phones on the 20th. For the first time, China is among the launch markets.

2:10 PM: As the event winds down, Elvis Costello takes the stage.

2:25 PM: That’s a wrap folks. No iPad, iPod, or Mac news, but we still have a few weeks to go before Apple has to get its products out the door for the holidays.

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